THE WOMAN
US, 2011, 101 minutes, Colour.
Pollyanna Mc Intosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis.
Directed by Lucky Mc Kee.
This is a disturbing film, not for audiences who do not want to be disturbed. And, it is disturbing on several levels.
The film opens quite surreastically. A woman in the wild is glimpsed. A baby is glimpsed. There are sounds of barking and baying of animals. Images merge into one another for several minutes. When the title comes up, there is a rapid transition to a technicoloured middle American world around a swimming pool, where families are gathered and enjoying a meal and get-together. Chris, the father, seems very genial, though he tends to commands everyone, especially his compliant wife, Belle, to obey his orders and whims. His teenage daughter looks depressed and solitary. His early adolescent son shoots basketballs. There is also a little daughter. Chris is a local lawyer who tries to help people, especially an elderly lady who wants to sell the pool. The contrast between the family and the wild woman is immense.
Chris is also a hunter, sights the woman, goes home to alter the cellar for her and then goes to net her. He installs her, roped and bound, and invites the family to meet his trophy whom he intends to civilise.
The film is a critique of the patriarchal American family, nuclear, not in the family that stays together sense, but more in the potentially explosive sense.
Sequences veer between the ‘normal’ which get less normal as the film progresses showing the feeding, washing and abusing of the captured woman. She is both desperate and vengeful while being humiliated.
Gradually, in school scenes, playground scenes, meals at home and chores around the house, the unease becomes palpable, the tyranny of the father, his blandly charming exterior contrasting with his demands, the meekly submissive housewife, the situation of the daughter and the horrible spectacle of the boy, encouraged by his father, becoming more and more like him. Eventually, the explosion happens with the visit of a concerned teacher. At this stage, violence in a bloody and gory struggle may become too much for some audiences who have been following the drama with interest. But, that is what the film is trying to say, that the polite and even religious and civic veneer will crack, the centre cannot hold and more violence than anticipated will erupt.
By the end, the audience is well aware that this is a film targeting misogyny as the father’s behaviour and attitude’s become more extreme.
Small-budget, with a range of popular songs accompanying the action (the sound seems to clash with the action, the lyrics making comment on it), the film is based on a novel by the director and writer, Jack Ketchum. It is a stand-alone sequel to his film Offspring. He also wrote Red, which Lucky Mc Kee directed, and the torture story, The Girl Next Door. Some commentators have dismissed The Woman as ugly trash. It is often ugly, but the makers and performers are trying to communicate something more serious than trash.
